It's time to begin Plugged In's official live blog of the Oscars. Our red-carpet invites must have gotten lost in the mail this year, so we'll be watching it on television, just like you are, and writing about whatever seems news- or noteworthy to us. Please feel free to add your comments as we go along, and we'll try to address them on the fly. All times are U.S. Mountain Standard. Refresh your browser window to see our latest comments.

6:19 p.m.

Paul Asay (Plugged In Associate Editor): So I've torn open the bag of Doritos you brought, Steve, cracked my first Mountain Dew and am all ready for the Oscars--and Plugged In's first foray into the world of on-the-fly blogging. And what a night it will be, don't you think?

Steven Isaac (Plugged In Editor): Hmmm. I see here that by averaging the durations of the last 25 Oscar telecasts, subtracting 3 hours and then dividing by 2, we'll be done here in exactly 7.42 hours. Are we going to take nap breaks or just keep chugging soda all night?

Paul: Soda, Steve, soda.

Steven: Fine. But I'm not doing the Dew with you. I'm an old-school, straight-up Coca-Cola man myself.

Paul: OK, since nobody's paying us anything for all these product placements, why don't we get started with the most important question of the night: What'll take home Best Picture?

Steven: Blue is the new gold this year. No question in my mind that it'll be Avatar all the way. The whole point of this year's Oscar changes (10 nominees for Best Picture among them) is to make regular folks start thinking the Oscars are relevant to them again. And a whole lotta regular folks have seen Avatar. And most of them have loved it. Plus, the Academy voters do not want to antagonize the Na'vi. They've seen what happened to those surly earthlings.

Paul: True. Thing is, though, I don't think it's that great of a movie. I mean, wasn't it just sort of Dances With Wolves under a different moon? I'm thinking The Hurt Locker's going to take it. Gritty, taut, compelling ...

Steven: And quite a bit more foul than Avatar, if I remember your review correctly. (Not that that ever stopped Oscar from loving a film before.)

Paul: No it didn't.

Steven: Looks like they're done with their red-carpet dress-examinations and interviews. The theme music's coming up. We're under way, everybody.

6:33 p.m.

Paul: Wow. Those are quite the outfits. Getting off to an interesting start, I'd say, with Neil Patrick Harris.

Steven: And why wouldn't he get things rolling with a dope reference?

Paul: Oh, and they just talked about Woody Harrelson being high. Hmmm.

Steven: Off-color jokes and recognitions for big stars are always the order of the day each year as the Oscars get started. So much so that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin's gag about a threesome probably went virtually unnoticed in most homes watching right now. But on a positive note, they made fun of the fact that movies are so often made based on video games!

6:48 p.m.

Paul: Oh, that Christoph Waltz leaves with the first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor). No surprise there, but I hear he was incredible. You saw the film, Steve?

Steven: Incredible performance in the middle of an incredible film ... in quite a few ways, artistically but also as it comes to some pretty extreme violence, too.

Paul: I was kinda rooting for Christopher Plummer ... overdue from The Sound of Music. But I think Quentin Tarantino should get some sort of an award just for his chin. It's pretty impressive.

6:58 p.m.

Paul: Best Animated Film. Up wins. That makes me happy. I'm feeling so ... up! As if my house was being pulled into the sky by balloons! In a great year for animated films, this was still the best of the bunch. 'Course, Fantastic Mr. Fox was pretty impressive, too.

7:10 p.m.

Steven: We talked a bit earlier about some of the negative content included in this year's Oscar open, and didn't really have any time to talk "shop." So I want to register the fact now that that was one of the lamest opens I've seen in years and years. Martin and Baldwin can be really funny when they want to be and when they have good writers (the subject that's just coming up right now on the screen). But this just didn't cut it.

Paul: But on the up side, these awards are cruising right along. We might be outta here in 15 minutes or so, don't you think? And I think Tina Fey's hair looks nifty.

Steven: The Hurt Locker wins its first of the evening for Original Screenplay.

Paul: Hurt Locker, 1, Avatar, 0.

Steven: And about Tina's hair. It looks very, very much like my wife's hair looked in 2001. So I'm not so sure it's as cutting edge as Tina might think it is.

Paul: I'm just jealous when I see anyone who still has hair.

7:19 p.m.

Paul: The John Hughes salute is pretty nostalgic. I think I saw every single one of his films when I was a kid. That was before I became a Plugged In movie critic and therefore far more discerning, of course.

Steven: The burner from The Breakfast Club was everything I never was in high school. I was shy, nice and cared about everybody. That guy did none of those things ... on the surface. But on the inside he was more like me than I knew back then. Must be a lesson in that somewhere--and I hope its not that I was a closet burner.

7:28 p.m.

Paul: Just noticed the ratings box on the screen. It's TV-14 with a string of letters after it. Kind of interesting that, for an awards show that's technically for the "whole family," the rating is fairly exclusionary. Would they be covering just in case something unforseen happens? Or does it address some of the plunging necklines? Hmmm.

Steven: Or did they know going in that they were going to push a few boundaries?

Steven: Best Animated Short goes to a film that looks like it tweaks commercialism in society. Isn't it about time for an ABC commercial break?

7:39 p.m.

Paul: Love Ben Stiller as one of the Na'vi. Shouldn't he be taller, though?

Steven: This is the funniest thing all night. Clean, clever, self-aware. Can't say as I'm a huge Ben Stiller fan when it comes to his movies, but this is great.

7:52 p.m.

Steven: Geoffrey Fletcher won for Adapted Screenplay for Precious. My immediate response to his halting acceptance speech: You're not drawing a blank, like you think you are. You're the realest guy that's been on stage yet.

7:59 p.m.

Paul: The big categories haven't seen a surprise yet. Mo'Nique has nabbed Best Supporting Actress for her role in Precious. And, I must say, it's richly deserved. She played an absolute monster, but she still managed to give the character just a bit of heartbreaking humanity. It was a brutal role in a worthwhile but brutal film.

8:20 p.m.

Paul: Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner are up, talking about how horror "doesn't get the respect it deserves." A good montage, but I got to say, the scariest thing I've seen tonight was George Clooney's glare.

Steven: Why is it that we like to be scared by movies? We can disagree with the usefulness or morality of horror films all we want (and we do!) but it's indisputable that people adore jump scenes and creepy blades for fingers on mad men (from Freddy to Edward Scissorhands). Sin nature? Or just thrill-ride silliness? It's something Christians have been grappling with for as long as movies have been trying to scare us--and long before that.

Paul: Yeah, pretty interesting. It's something we do a fair amount of talking about at Plugged In. Man, after seeing the complete montage, I think I know what that TV-14 rating was for ... nothing like seeing aliens jump out of people's rib cages and centipedes crawling into people's mouths to make an Oscar ceremony complete.

Steven: And now they're on to the next thing: an award for sound effects. There's something that makes a huge difference in horror movies. Because if you've ever watched a scary movie with the sound off, you know that it's usually more funny than scary. We all really respond to sound.

8:27 p.m.

Paul: Another award for The Hurt Locker. Wow. I think that makes it Hurt Locker 3, Avatar 1. Steve, are you still sure Avatar's going to win Best Picture?

Steven: Well, sure, why shouldn't I be? Didn't the Na'vi get to vote for their own film? And an alien vote counts twice. They're just letting all the little guys win a few before gobbling up the big one.

8:35 p.m.

Paul: Jeto wonders whether we think the Paranormal Activity spoof clip was funny. It was! But not as funny as Ben Stiller's Na'vi impersonation.

Steven: Cinematography award goes to Avatar. So, Paul, that's one more for the blue team.

8:39 p.m.

Paul: James Taylor's playing for the annual "In Memoriam" segment. This is one of my favorite parts of the ceremony, as morbid as that probably sounds. Natasha Richardson, Karl Malden ... I feel the sudden need to get a tissue.

Steven: Um, I didn't know "In My Life" was supposed to be a sad, funeral-type song. My wife and I had this sung at our wedding!

8:50 p.m.

Steven: My daughter's in ballet. She'd love the dance montage if I dared let her watch a TV-14 evening of Hollywood hype! (She's 9.) Maybe it'll be on YouTube tomorrow.

Paul: Tomorrow? It's probably posted right now!

Steven: This is much better than the Vegas-style stuff at the beginning of the show. Nicely choreographed. Very expressive in a cool, old-school way.

Paul: I never knew you were such a dance nerd, Steve.

Steven: A dancing daughter has a way of changing a man.

8:55 p.m.

Paul: Avatar's pulled even with The Hurt Locker with its win in Best Visual Effects. Maybe you were right after all, Steve.

Steven: A half-billion-dollar production budget should buy you at least a Best Visual Effects award.

9:04 p.m.

Paul: Well, it looks like lots of you are pretty pleased with Up's win for Best Original Score. I completely agree. I just hear the first notes of that song and I just start thinking of Paradise Falls, talking dogs and balloons. And I can't help but smile.

Steven: The Cove has won Best Documentary Feature.

Paul: What a coincidence! Steve and I are wearing Snuggies here at Plugged In headquarters, too!

9:12 p.m.

Paul: You know, I don't think I've heard an acceptance speech yet that made me roll my eyes. Is this unusual, or am I just getting more tolerant in my old age?

Steven: The night is young yet--at least by Oscar standards.

And we're talking some serious negativity. Take a look at this, written following the Grammy performance:

or …

Ouch.

Swift isn't without support, though. Her label, Big Machine Records, came to her defense. CEO Scott Borchetta said, "She is the voice of this generation. She speaks directly to [her fans], and they speak directly back to her. This is not American Idol. This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator. It's not about that technically perfect performance."

But Borchetta's comments haven't stopped ongoing criticism—maybe because the performance magnified what some people thought of Swift before the Grammys: Taylor-haters have long contended that she's an overhyped, underdeserving superstar.

But maybe some of the ire stems from something else. Since Taylor's music is relatively wholesome, I wonder if that's part of the fuel behind the condemnation. I've heard less fresh-faced but equally famous artists give stinkers of a performance—but suffer no public censure whatsoever.

So is Swift, because she's "nice," more likely to draw outrage than, say, Lady Gaga if her vocals were flat? Are some people inherently turned off or made nervous by Taylor's sweetness in an industry that usually pushes sex, drugs and, well, rock and roll?

What do you think about it all?

It was a clean hit—no flags were thrown, no fines were levied. And it was, I must admit, a clever turn for what at first appeared to be a slick-but-standard advertising spot. The Super Bowl was full of ads featuring screaming chickens and talking babies and underwear-clad men, but only one featured a son taking down his mom (in an extremely respectful and affectionate way, of course).

The Tebow/Focus on the Family spot proved to be controversially uncontroversial. On the way in to work today, I heard one media watcher criticize the ad because he didn't know what it was even about: The pro-life ad was about as polarizing as a room full of puppies.

For myself, I really liked it: It was light, professional and sincere—and it played even better than I hoped it would, quite frankly.

But then that's what you'd expect me to say, wouldn't you? After all, Focus on the Family is, literally, paying me to write this blog. While we here at Plugged In are all about dispensing fair critiques, perhaps my opinion is not completely reliable when it comes to our material.

So … what did you think? Did the Focus/Tebow spot score? Or fumble?

And while you're at it, tell me what you thought of the other Super Bowl ads, too. What was your favorite? Did anything shock and appall you? I personally didn't think the ads were quite as funny as they had been in years' past, but some were pretty effective. This morning I have a sudden urge to eat at Denny's and wander down to the vending machine for a Snickers.

I mean, I understand the allure. Wouldn't we all be tempted to lose a few wrinkles and look less like that before model for an ex-lax ad. But things are getting ridiculous. Take MTV's The Hills star Heidi Montag, for example. Now, here's a young girl who became famous as a teen for pretty much nothing more than being a sun-kissed California beauty—as you can see from the far-left pic from the Jan. 25 edition of People.

Well, this 23-year-old recently went in for a major plastic surgery overhaul that included:

• Mini brow lift

• Botox shots

• Nose job

• Fat injections in lips

• Chin reduction

• Neck liposuction

• Ears pinned back

• Breast augmentation (Her second)

• Liposuction buttock augmentation

And yes, the girl to the right of that young Heidi Montag is the "new and improved" celebrity.

"No one is ever perfect," Montag told People. "But I am obsessed with plastic surgery and with maintaining my looks."

We can, and usually do, point a finger of blame at Hollywood, but in reality it's not solely the entertainment industry's fault. (Hollywood's elite just happen to be the ones with enough money to have full body slice and dice fests and then unveil the results on E!.) They may inspire the masses with their prefab pulchritude, but it's we the people who are sporting a changing mindset in this area. And sadly, our youngest are the ones to be swayed the most.

According to Britain's goodsurgeonguide.co.uk, 41% of girls ages 13-16 want some sort of cosmetic surgery. The American Society of Plastic surgeons reported that in 2008 over 228,000 13- to 18-year-olds went under the knife for surgical beautification. And the results can be deadly. Not long ago, a story came out about a high school cheerleader whose life was cut short on the operating table during a breast augmentation.

Now, I'm not trying to scream scary warnings of young people dying during plastic surgery (even though Ms. Montag spoke of a near-death scare during her post-surgery recovery). What I am saying is that there's definitely something—be it our perspective on life and happiness or our mental and emotional health—that's being hurt with this new craving for an impossibly elusive perfection.

Nope, I'm not reviewing it.  But she did alert me to it, so of course, I watched—and lost a quarter of my brain cells in the process. (I'm thankful I can still type!)

Here's the premise of this ABC reality/dating/attempted comedy program: Men roll by on a conveyor belt while five women tell them whether they're interested in dating them or not. If a woman likes a man, she can ask him out on a date—but she can also trade up if someone more interesting rolls by. (Apparently, no one cares about the men's feelings, and several looked hurt when they were discarded.)

The guys have one minute to make an impression—good, bad or horrifying. One man came out using nunchucks. Another read badly written love poetry and suggested he has some impressive physical attributes. Others tried magic tricks or the ukulele. One man just screamed a lot.

Shockingly, none of these dudes were asked out.

But one guy rolled by wearing a Speedo and holding his dog. He was snatched up immediately because the woman thought he was "courageous." (It didn't hurt that he was also built like a Greek god.)

My question in all of this: Is this gradually becoming the state of American dating? If so, are we getting so shallow because of The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and other reality dating programs where potential spouses are practically shopped for?

Have you ever known a dating "consumer?" And if you think our dating culture really is becoming more like a conveyor belt than a prayerful process, then how do we get out of shopping mode?

Today marks the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons. Whether you like the Fox show or hate it, you can’t deny that it’s infiltrated our culture. And thus, our language.

D'oh!

Maybe it’s because I’m the resident geek who’s collected dictionaries since she was 11 (actually, I think I’m just the only editor here who’s man enough to admit that) that I was asked to comment on The Simpsons lexicon.

Mmmmm ……. lexicon ……. wordy …

Anyway. In 2001, the highly revered 20-volume, roughly 3,000-pound Oxford English Dictionary added Homer’s customary interjection "d'oh" (also spelled "doh"). Were he real and coherent enough, Mr. Simpson should be impressed. And the Collins English Dictionary added Lisa’s "meh" in 2008. That’s M-E-H, meh—an expression of utter boredom or disinterest.

Other dictionaries have added fauxcabulary gone viral as well. How is it possible that this show has embiggened our vocabulary with such cromulent words that have actually been used in scientific journals?

This is only a TV show, right? I mean, everybody knows television doesn’t affect our attitudes or language. It’s just entertainment.

But if that’s the case, then why have so many people adopted Simpsons lingo without even knowing it? And to those who indiscriminately shriek "Woohoo!", yes, I’m pointing a finger at you (but only because I have four pointing back at myself).

So, do you use  this sort of fauxcabulary, whether it be from The Simpsons or from another show? If you do, is it from watching the show itself, or from just living in a society that has embraced it? And, again, like or hate The Simpsons, do you have any thoughts on why it’s popular enough to ensconce itself into a language that was cromulent enough without it?

Just call them the Meep Generation.

A bunch of kids from Danvers (Mass.) High School nearly hopped into (ahem) a beaker full of hot water when they used the word meep as a method of social disruption.

Meep, to my ear, seems an odd sort of rallying cry for school chaos. Introduced to the English lexicon by Beaker, Dr. Honeydew’s orange-haired, no-necked assistant on The Muppet Show, meep has become (according to The Salem News) a word teens use when they’re at a loss for something to say. And while Salem’s news story didn’t specify just what manner of meepisms were going on or planned, they must’ve been pretty … meepish. The school’s principal sent an automated phone message to all students’ parents, warning them if their teens said or displayed the word at school, they could be suspended.

"It has nothing to do with the word," said Danvers principal Thomas Murray. "It has to do with the conduct of the students. We wouldn’t just ban a word just to ban a word."

Essentially, the principal was riffing on the old parenting cliché, "It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it." And it’s true. Words, by themselves, are just letters strung together. We give words their power through meaning and inflection. Words like "frig" or "freak" are docile little constructs in themselves, but through modern-day usage, they’ve become stand-ins for a far more offensive f-word—and have, in a sense, taken on its meaning. Yosemite Sam could’ve burned his grandmother’s ears when he got on one of his foul-mouthed tears—yet the actual sentence was light on curses and heavy with words like "tarnation" and "galloot."

More recently, Fantastic Mr. Fox doesn’t contain a single cuss word—but it does repeatedly use the word "cuss" in constructs that would feature actual cuss words ("you gotta be cussin’ me," for instance). Do the woodland animals in Fantastic swear? Not in a way that would alarm censors or trigger a ClearPlay machine. And yet they do all the same. Maybe you could think of folks in your own life who invest an extraordinary amount of power in rather ordinary words.

I doubt these Danvers high schoolers are turning meep into a swear word. But they were able to imbue it with a power Beaker would’ve not dreamed of … and that, in and of itself, is a pretty effective English lesson if they take it as such. We gotta watch what we say … and how we say it.

Pretty fascinating, this language of ours. When I think about it deeply, really only one word comes to mind.

Meep.